Jul 092016
 
 July 9, 2016  Posted by at 2:59 pm Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  4 Responses »


Ann Rosener San Francisco, California. The Bank of America 1943

The post-Brexit ‘conversation’ in Britain is taking on grotesque proportions. Nobody seems to know how to react, at least not in a rational manner. They all look to be stuck in phase one of Kübler Ross’s Five Stages of Grief, i.e. Denial. Phase two is supposed to be Anger, and while there’s plenty of that, the shape is takes makes one think Angry Denial, instead of a progression between phases.

That is to say, I don’t think I’ve seen one voice expressing anger at themselves. It’s all somebody else’s fault. And it just keeps going. After Farage, Johnson, Gove et al had been blamed for all there’s wrong with everyone else’s lives, now the anger is pointed at the two women who are supposed to be competing for the poisoned chalice of UK prime minister. That both belong to the clique which has just been voted down 2 weeks ago doesn’t seem to bother anyone. That is not smart.

But if you must insist on calling 17 million of your neighbors ‘racist’ and ‘stupid’ just to feel better about yourself, perhaps there’s no denying that the Five Stages insist on taking their time. Problem with that is there is no such time, before you know what’s happened the nation will be stuck with another ‘leader’ that far too many people are not going to be listening to. A game of ‘who said what about whom’ is not helping.

A main issue would seem to be the Anglo(-Saxon) disease version 2.0, as I label it: whereas numerous countries around the world have seen new political parties rise to the fore, Britain, the US, Australia etc. are sticking with the same old same old, even if that makes them essentially ungovernable. What Britain needs is Podemos or a Five-Star movement, and so do the US, Canada, Australia.

The global economic system is now collapsing so overtly that nothing incumbent powers do can hide it any longer. A more flexible system, and a less ‘let’s stick with what we got’ view of life, can be very helpful during times like these, because they can ease the friction of established powers losing their power, no matter how painful that process still will be.

In many if not most countries there is hardly any difference anymore between what used to be right and left in politics. Barack Obama, Tony Blair and soon perhaps Hillary Clinton were voted in by what used to be the left wing of their countries, but they might just as well have come from the other side of the aisle. They all represent the establishment, not the people.

That has worked to an extent so far, but now it is over, simply because too many people have too little left to feel comfortable in their lives. In that regard it’s interesting to see how Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn gets treated by his own party for wanting to take it ‘too far’ to the left, i.e. to represent the people. This may split up the party after all, and Corbyn would and should be happy to be rid of the right wing of the party, but he has caught Anglo Disease 2.0 too.

If Bernie Sanders or Jeremy Corbyn, even Donald Trump for that matter, were Italian, Spanish or even German, they would have started another party, not try to ‘reform’ an existing one. It doesn’t work, or it’s too much trouble trying. The disconnection is too great, between what the parties once stood for and stand for now, and between what they say and what they do.

 

Anglo Disease 1.0, by the way, is the government-induced blowing of housing bubbles in London, Vancouver, Sydney, Auckland etc etc. Take a good look at this graph and you can see what Beautiful Brexit (think I should patent the term?) is set to do to UK home prices: make then affordable again. Why do so many people apparently think that’s a terrible thing?

And Anglo Disease 1.0 is plenty contagious. Look at private debt levels in the Netherlands, where in the years after the graph below, 2015-6, home prices have kept rising and so have sales. Private debt at 800% (900% now?) of GDP is not a healthy thing no matter how you twist it, but they’ll all tell you they’re making smart investments and money hand over fist.


EA=Euro Area

Government and/or central bank induced bubbles are criminal. They make an economy look better temporarily, but people will have hefty prices to pay when they pop. And pop is just what Brexit does with the UK housing bubble. Whether that’s a good or a bad thing is perhaps up to one’s own personal judgment, but no thinking body would say yes when asked if they prefer living in a bubble.

For me, sitting inside a 10-year central bank liquidity bubble, I’m mostly afraid for those who have ever less left. The jobless, pensioners, anyone relying on benefits or fixed income, have yet to realize how much worse off they will be, but they will. ‘Homeowners’ with huge mortgages, even if they’re at low rates, will see ‘values’ plunge to the point where lenders will come with margin calls. And what then? More bank bail-outs?

Central banks and governments have been blowing their bubbles with one goal in mind: to keep incumbent powers in place. That part has succeeded, but it’s the only part, and the price to be paid by everyone else will be horrendous. And in the end the incumbents will be gone regardless, albeit with many pockets full of loot.

The last move the ‘rulers’ have left up their sleeves is perhaps to go to war with Russia, but I don’t see the people of Europe, despite 10+ years of heavy anti-Putin propaganda, allowing it. Europe might instead come to resemble the US, where people have another sort of battle to fight, a domestic one, which if not properly approached could lead to -more and increasing- very ugly confrontations.

Trump may not be the best person to lead his country into that, but the establishment, represented by Hillary, looks a much worse choice. Trump doesn’t owe nearly as much to those behind the curtains who have so much to lose. Hey, I wish there were better people available, but they’re not. Bernie Sanders has been outpropagandized and outmaneuvered, and he’s not perfect either.

America, too, will have to reinvent itself, just like so many nations across the planet. At least Trump will give the country a shot at not being dragged down into another war it can’t win, in or with Russia or China. Still, the art of propaganda on all sides and in all media has reached such dizzying heights and contortions that not a lot will seem obvious anymore.

One thing will though: increasing poverty. That will be the main factor to drive out the old and vote in the new. But the new will have two faces, one of which is Podemos, Sanders, Grillo or Corbyn, and one of which is some form or another of extreme right wing voices. Who come with their own Denial and Anger and other never completed Five Stages of Grief.

 

 

Elizabeth Kübler Ross: On Death and Dying – 1969

1 – Denial. Denial is a conscious or unconscious refusal to accept facts, information, reality, etc., relating to the situation concerned. …
2 – Anger.
3 – Bargaining.
4 – Depression. Also referred to as preparatory grieving. …
5 – Acceptance.

 

 

Dec 082015
 
 December 8, 2015  Posted by at 7:17 pm Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  8 Responses »


Poached baby gorilla, Virunga Park

Anglo American, a British company, and one of the world’s biggest miners, and a ‘producer’ (actually just a miner, how did those two terms ever get mixed up?!) of platinum (world no. 1), diamonds, copper, nickel, iron ore and coal, said today it would scrap dividends AND fire 85,000 of it 135,000 global workforce (that’s 63%!).

Anglo is just the first in a long litany line we’ll see going forward. Commodities ‘producers’ are being completely wiped out, hammered, killed, murdered. They’ve been able to hedge their downside risks so far, but now find they can’t even afford the price of the hedges (insurance) anymore. And then there’s all the banks and funds that financed them.

And they’ve all been gearing up for production increases too, with grandiose plans and -leveraged- investments aiming for infinity and beyond. You know, it’s the business model. 2016 will be a year for the record books.

Just check this Bloomberg graph for copper supply and demand as an example. How ugly would you like it today?

And what’s true for copper goes for the whole range of raw materials. Because China went from double-digit growth to shrinking imports and exports in pretty much no time flat. And China was all they had left.

Iron ore is dropping below $40, and that’s about the break-even point. Of course, oil has done that quite a while ago already. It’s just that we like to think oil’s some kind of stand-alone freak incident. It is not. With oil today plunging below $37 (down some 15% since the OPEC meeting last week), it doesn’t matter anymore how much more efficient shale companies can get.

They’re toast. They’re done. And with them are their lenders. Who have hedged their bets too, obviously, but hedging has a price. Or else you could throw money at any losing enterprise.

But there’s another side to this, one that not a soul talks about, and it has Washington, London and Brussels very worried. Here goes:

These large mining -including oil- corporations most often operate in regions in the world that are remote and located in countries with at best questionable governments (the corporations like it like that, it’s how they know who to bribe to be able to rape and pillage).

The corporations de facto form a large part of the US/UK/EU political/military control system of these areas. They work in tandem with the CIA, MI5, the US and UK military, to keep the areas ‘friendly’ to western industries and regime.

This has caused unimaginable misery across the globe, in for instance (a good example) the Congo, one of the world’s richest regions when it comes to minerals ‘we’ want, but one of the poorest areas on the planet. No coincidence there.

Untold millions have died as a result. ‘We’ have done a lot more damage there than we are presently doing in Syria, if you can imagine. And many more millions are forced to live out their lives in miserable circumstances on top of the world’s richest riches. But that will now change.

Thing is, with the major miners going belly up, ‘our’ control of these places will also fade. Because it’s all been about money all along, and the US won’t be able to afford the -political and military- control of these places if there are no profits to be made.

They’ll be sinkholes for military budgets, and those will be stretched already ‘protecting’ other places. The demise of commodities is a harbinger of a dramatically changing US position in the world. Washington will be forced to focus on protecting it own soil, and move away from expansionist policies.

Because it can’t afford those without the grotesque profits its corporations have squeezed out of the populations in these ‘forgotten’ lands. That’s going to change global politics a lot.

And it’s not as if China will step in. They can’t afford to take over a losing proposition; the Chinese economy is not only growing at a slower pace, it may well be actually shrinking. Beijing’s new reality is that imports and exports both are falling quite considerably (no matter the ‘official’ numbers), and the cost of a huge expansion into global mining territory makes little sense right now.

With the yuan now part of the IMF ‘basket‘m Beijing can no longer print at will. China must focus on what happens at home. So must the US. They have no choice. Other than going to war.

And, granted, given that choice, they all probably will. But the mining companies will still be mere shells of their former selves by then. There’s no profit left to be made.

This is not going to end well. Not for anybody. Other than the arms lobby. What it will do is change geopolitics forever, and a lot.